For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in
regard to righteousness. 21 Therefore what benefit were you then
deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the
outcome of those things is death. 22 But now having been freed from
sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in
sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.

Focusing on Sin in My Own Life, not Somebody Else's

The big picture of Romans 6 is that the reality of justification
by faith does not produce Christians who are cavalier about their
own sin. In other words, Paul writes this chapter to show why
believing in the righteousness of Christ as the ground of our
acceptance with God does not make us indifferent to sin, but
dead-set against sin in our own lives.

And let me stress that – our own lives. There's not a word
in this chapter about getting bent out of shape because of the sin
in other people against us. Paul will talk about how to handle sin
in other people in chapter 12, but for now, the big issue is my sin
against God and against you, not your sin against me. So let's not
be pointing fingers. Let's be standing before the mirror of the
Word of God.

So the big purpose of Romans 6 is to show why justification by
faith always brings sanctification with it. Or as the old-time
teachers used to say: this chapter teaches why the faith that
alone justifies, is never alone, but always
brings a holiness of life with it. Or another way to say it would
be that even though justifying faith does not produce perfection in
this age, it always produces a new direction in this age. It
dethrones sin, enthrones God, and makes war on sin in our own
hearts and bodies.

God's Work, Justification, Sanctification and Eternal Life

As the chapter comes toward a close, three things become
increasingly clear. It becomes clearer and clearer that our
condition as humans is not just that we are guilty for sinning and
need forgiveness and the righteousness of Christ to commend us to
God, but also that we are in slavery to sin and need to be freed
from its power as well as its punishment.

And it becomes increasingly clear, as we saw last week, that
this deliverance (this "sanctification") is decisively the work of
God, and then, dependently, our work. We must do it. But we cannot
do it unless God enables us to do it.

And thirdly, it becomes increasingly clear that our eternal life
depends not only justification, but also on sanctification. In
other words, if a person says, "Oh, I am justified by faith and
therefore I don't need to renounce sin and pursue holiness," that
person is probably not saved. And without being freed from that
slavery to sin, he will not inherit eternal life.

Those three things are in today's text, Romans 6:20-22: 1) All
of us are by nature enslaved to sin – we don't rule sin; sin
rules us. 2) God alone is the decisive deliverer from this slavery,
and our part – which is real and crucial – is dependent
on his. 3) Without this deliverance from the rule and slavery of
sin – without a new direction of righteousness and holiness
in our lives – we will not inherit eternal life.

Now this is why all of Christian ministry is so serious. What we
do here on Sunday morning in worship and in Sunday School, and what
you do in your small groups and what you do in your family
devotions and times of teaching the children, and what you do in
your personal times of prayer and meditation over the Word –
all these things are utterly serious matters because they are the
means that God appoints for the triumph of faith over sin. If a
person begins to fall away from these precious means of grace,
nobody should take it lightly. What is at stake is eternal life.
Paul said to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:12, "Fight the good fight
of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you
were called." The fight of faith is a laying hold on eternal life.
Not to fight for faith and against sin, is to let go of eternal
life. Who knows but that you may find in the end that it was never
yours. And if by the Spirit you fight on (Romans 8:13), it
is yours.

Let's see these three points in Romans 6:20-22.

1. All of us are by nature enslaved to sin – we don't
rule sin; sin rules us.

Verse 20: "For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in
regard to righteousness." Notice, Paul lumps us all together in
this. We were all once slaves of sin. Not some of us. All of us.
That is, we were not neutral, self-determining creatures standing
before sin and righteousness, able to make our sovereign choice. We
were slaves to sin from the beginning. Sin was master; we were not.
Our wills were in bondage to the allurements of sin. Because of our
corruption – the distortion of our values – we saw sin
as more attractive than righteousness. So we were free, Paul says,
in regard to righteousness. That is, it had no power to sway us.
Righteousness didn't look attractive or rewarding. And so its
appeals were powerless. That's the first point, and Paul will
confirm it in verse 22 when he speaks of being "freed from sin and
enslaved to God."

2. God alone is the decisive deliverer from this slavery, and
our part – which is real and crucial – is dependent on
his.

The second point is that God alone is the decisive deliverer
from this slavery, and our part – which is real and crucial
– is dependent on his. You can see this in verse 22 when Paul
says, "But having been freed from sin and enslaved to God . . ."
Notice, ultimately we don't free ourselves; we have "been freed."
And ultimately we don't make ourselves slaves of God, we have been
"enslaved" to God. Behind these passive verbs, as we saw last week,
is the work of God. This is what happens "under grace." When Christ
is our righteousness by faith, the grace of God enters us mightily,
and breaks the power of cancelled sin, and transforms us in the
renewing of our minds, and writes the law upon our hearts, and
gives us a new spirit, and inclines us to the Word of God, and
causes us to see the beauty of Christ and his ways as the treasure
of our lives.

Becoming a Christian is not like standing neutral between two
possible slave masters and having the power of ultimate
self-determination, and then deciding, from outside any slavery,
which we will serve. There are no neutral people. There are only
slaves of sin and slaves of God. Becoming a Christian is to have
the sovereign captain of the battleship of righteousness commandeer
the slave ship of unrighteousness; put the ship-captain, sin, in
irons; break the chains of the slaves; and give them such a
spiritual sight of grace and glory that they freely serve the new
sovereign forever as the irresistible joy and treasure of their
lives. That's how we got saved. God freed us from one master and
enslaved us to himself by the compelling power of a superior
promise. So embrace this work of God. Receive Christ and his
promise as the treasure of your life.

In passing, I should mention that if the imagery of slavery
bothers you – as it should in part – especially in
America where the history of slavery is rooted in the most
demeaning kind of racism, you will be encouraged to know that the
imagery bothered Paul too. Verse 18 is parallel to verse 22 in
saying, "Having been freed from sin, you became slaves of [were
enslaved to] righteousness." But then notice how he pauses to
apologize, in a way, for the inadequacy of the imagery. Verse 19:
"I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your
flesh."

In other words, as humans we grope in our weakness and
finiteness for language that is sufficient for great and glorious
and complex realities, and have to settle for words and images that
are partially helpful and partially misleading. Paul knows good and
well that there were aspects of slavery that he would not want us
to attribute to our relation to righteousness or to God, even
though he says that we are "enslaved" to righteousness (verse 18)
and "enslaved" to God (verse 22).

Jesus, you recall, did the same thing in John 15:15 "No longer
do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his
master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all
things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you."
So there are some aspects of slavery that we should apply to our
relationship to God and some that we should not. And there are some
aspects of friendship that we should apply and some we should not.
We judge from the context what aspect of an image we are to focus
on.

Slavery in Romans 6:6, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22 does not imply
mainly being forced against our will to do something. It mainly
implies that our wills are enslaved. They are bound to do sin or
bound to do righteousness because by nature we either see the
rewards of sin or the beauty of righteousness as more attractive.
So in both cases we do what we want most to do. (This is true, we
will see, even though chapter 7 will reveal that we can have a
divided will, sometimes doing what we don't want to do.) But we are
bound to do it – enslaved to do it – because our hearts
are either so corrupt or so renewed in Christ that we see sin or
righteousness as compelling. We are either enslaved to sin or
enslaved to God in that sense.

3. Without this deliverance from the rule and slavery of sin
–
without a new direction of righteousness and holiness in
our lives – we will not inherit eternal life.

Finally, the third point is that eternal life depends on this
freedom from sin and this slavery to God. That is the point of
verse 22: "But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God,
you derive your benefit [literally, "fruit"], resulting in
sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life."

Eternal life is in contrast with the "death" in verse 21: "What
benefit [literally, "fruit"] were you then deriving from the things
of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is
death." In other words, the result of living in slavery to sin is
death. But, he says, by contrast in verse 22, the result of being
freed from sin and being enslaved to God and then bearing the fruit
unto sanctification is eternal life. These steps are not optional.
This is the only path that leads to eternal life: being freed from
the slavery to sin, enslaved to God, bearing fruit in a life of
holiness, and finally eternal life. That is why holiness and the
fight against sin in this chapter is so serious. We are not playing
games. Eternal life is in the balance.

In other words, eternal life comes to the person whose faith in
Christ is real – who receives Christ not just as a truth but
as a treasure. And the reality of that faith shows itself in two
ways, not just one way.

• It shows itself real by leading to justification,
• and then it shows itself real by leading to
  sanctification.
• The justification is our legal righteous standing with
  God because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ;
• the sanctification is the practical, progressive, moral
  outworking of that perfect righteousness in a changed life of
  holiness. Real faith leads to both.
• So justification is necessary for eternal life as the
  legal ground or basis of it, which we obtain by faith;.
• and sanctification is necessary for eternal life as the
  public evidence that our faith is real.

He Rules the World

And what we will hear next week is that all of this is a gift of
God. At every moment we are utterly dependent on him. So I urge
you: look away from yourself this Christmas. Look away from man,
and look to God. Look to Christ. Look to the cross, the capstone of
a life of obedience and love. Look at the resurrection. Look at the
rule of Christ over the kings of the earth. And there may you see
his infinite worth, and receive him as the treasure of your
life!

He rules the world with truth and grace
And makes the nations prove
The glories of his righteousness
And wonders of his love.